


welcome to the twenty-first century, fellow millennial trash

by mistspinners



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Asexual Character, Coffee Shops, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, seriously they spend so much time drinking coffee this is almost a coffee shop au, vaguely set somewhere in america, vaguely sometime pre-2016 elections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24000673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistspinners/pseuds/mistspinners
Summary: It’d been two days before Enjolras caught on, but in those two days, Courfeyrac had matched him with not just all of Theta Delta Sigma, but also every bicurious Republican on campus. Some of them had sent him messages, clearly hoping to bait him into debating them, while others had sent…other things.Courfeyrac, as the undisputed bane of Enjolras’s life, had taken particular pleasure in responding to the latter with winky face emojis and quotes from The Bee Movie.Or: In which an interfraternity challenge, late-night Tinder conversations, and copious amounts of independently brewed coffee leads to the romance of the century. Featuring asexual Enjolras, unorthodox recruitment tactics, and chaos demons in the form of your college roommates.
Relationships: Courfeyrac/Jean Prouvaire, Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables), Joly/Bossuet Laigle/Musichetta
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	welcome to the twenty-first century, fellow millennial trash

**Author's Note:**

  * For [discokonomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/discokonomi/gifts).



Enjolras waited until Courfeyrac had finished speaking, and then he finished his coffee, put down his mug, and said, “no.”

“Oh, come on!” Courfeyrac said, throwing his hands in the air with such force that the papers on the table fluttered into the air; Combeferre, with unerring precision and long-suffering experience, was the only thing saving Enjolras’s polisci notes from utter chaos. “Half the proceeds are going to charity!”

“They could _all_ go to charity if the administration would spend their money on actually relevant activities instead of these inane interfraternity activities.”

“A valid point,” Combeferre noted, smoothing down the edges of an old paper for Empire and the Other: A Critical Overview, “but also unnecessary. Be polite, Enjolras.”

“Politeness is another word for silencing discontent,” Enjolras said, more out of habit than anything. “I’m not debasing myself with this nonsense.”

“E, hate to break it to you, but I don’t think asking you to sign up for a dating app exactly counts as debasement, otherwise half the campus would be pretty much fucked—”

“Which they _are,_ and apparently want to be.”

Courfeyrac sighed. Inflected with the influence of two theater parents and years of musical theatre experience, it was impressively woebegone, as though he was a starving urbin whose request for bread Enjolras had just turned down instead of, you know, a full-grown adult attempting to cajole Enjolras into participating in some inane “what fraternity has the hottest members on campus?” challenge.

“C’mon, E. Do it for me? You can delete Tinder right after ThetaSig wins, and I promise I’ll never bring up the words “Super Like” or “masc 4 masc” around you ever again. Also, you know, one of the frats we’d be competing against is Delta Kappa Epsilon, and everyone’s pegging them as the hands-down winner because of Montparnasse. And you hate Montparnasse.”

“I don’t hate Montparnasse. I simply think he’s a spineless, stupid idiot who seems to think not being a dick is an optional skill, like learning to play guitar or whatever.”

“Yeah, but he’s a hot dick, okay? By which I mean, no, I haven’t actually seen his junk, but lots of people have, and it’s apparently good enough that people keep on coming back for more.”

“Thank you for those very necessary details,” Combeferre said, not looking up from his copy of _On_ _The Reproduction of Capitalism._ “Please inform me when you complete your exhaustive survey of the relative merits of various campus genitalia.”

“Isn’t that basically how Facebook got started? I mean, there’s probably some sociology student already on it, I bet you could get tons of funding if you frame it the right way... _shit,_ I could probably get funding if I put it as some sort of performance art piece or something, theatre department would eat that shit straight up. Anyways,” Courfeyrac said, coming down from that particularly horrifying line of thought, “look, Enjolras, I know you think it’s stupid—and okay, yeah, it is pretty damn stupid, but that’s why it’ll be fun! And it’ll be for a good cause and every little bit helps, you’d be giving into inertia and helplessness and all those other things next to apathy if you don’t do it. Don’t be a hypocrite, E. Help a good cause out.”

Enjolras reached across the table for one of Combeferre’s chocolate chip cookies. “Won’t it be inherently hypocritical for me, someone with no interest in dating or hook-ups, to sign up for a dating app?”

“It would be ironic! A statement on the inescapability of commodified sexuality in contemporary society—look, even Ferre’s agreed to help out, and you know how much he’d rather read Foucault than do anything remotely frivolous.”

“To be clear,” Combeferre said, “I did this for the cause of public health within the apartment—Courfeyrac has _very explicitly_ promised me that he would stop leaving his socks around the apartment.”

“He got me to sign an agreement, too,” Courfeyrac said. “Very intense. The room’s a lost cause though, because Ferre didn’t even try to bring that up.”

“Thank you to Combeferre for the public service, then.” Enjolras leaned back in his chair. “Unfortunately, I believe in internally driven change and not externally imposed ethics, and so unless it’s world peace and a lifetime of dark roast, I am not in the market for whatever you’re selling.”

“God, you are such a dick sometimes, E, did you know that?” Courfeyrac sighed, draping himself in a chair. “Like, everyone on this campus thinks you’re this super uptight, righteous social justice crusader, but no one actually knows what a sarcastic little shit you actually are.”

“I’m glad to know my efforts are appreciated.”

“It wasn’t a compliment,” Courfeyrac grumbled, face mashed against his arm. “Look, the point, E, is you’ve got this reputation on campus for being kind of high-key always super intense, alright? And that’s great sometimes, in warding off assholes and all that, but it’s also a little intimidating? Like, not to everyone obviously, but the shyer types, definitely. You can think of this as image rebranding okay, making Les Amis a little more approachable to kids you might otherwise scare off.”

“I don’t scare people off,” Enjolras scoffed. “Unless they’re racist or transphobic or otherwise a dick, there’s no reason for people to be intimidated by me.”

“That’s completely untrue,” Combeferre said.

“I’m sorry Enjolras,” he said, continuing as though he hadn’t just calmly betrayed sixteen years’ worth of friendship and trust, “but Courf has a point. There’s a reason it took Jehan so long to attend their first Les Amis meeting. You’re a bit intimidating, love. I don’t think signing up for a hookup app is the best way to counteract this,” glancing at Courfeyrac, who shrugged and raised his hands palms-up in the universal _who, me?_ gesture, “but I do think the, ah…righteous fury is something you could try to tone down, at least when people are well-intentioned.”

"Exactly what Ferre said,” Courfeyrac said, leaning over the back of his chair. “Totally what I was trying to get at all along, except for the part where I think a hookup app is exactly what you should do. Seducing the youth with communism and hot bods—a killer combination for class consciousness! Anyways, we just really need to beat DKE this year, alright? You can delete Tinder right after, and I’ll even do most of the actual swiping for you so you don’t even have to spend too much time among the degenerates, alright?”

And, well. Awful traitors though they both may have been, but in the face of sixteen years of friendship, there were some things you just had to cave in on.

“Fine,” Enjolras sighed, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “But you’re bringing coffee for the next meeting.”

“You know,” Joly said one evening as they were sprawled out over the truly enormous bed he shared with Bossuet, “you should sign up for Tinder.”

In retrospect, Grantaire supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. Joly might have been the quieter of his roommates, but he was still dating Bossuet, and those were the kinds of facts that didn’t align without a reason.

“Okay,” Grantaire says. “And why exactly should I do that?”

“Wait,” Bossuet says, popping up from behind his desk likesome kind of phantom summoned only by the possibility of bad life choices, “are you telling me R doesn’t have a Tinder? Dude, it’s 2017— what the fuck kind of millennial are you?”

“I’m an old soul. I prefer human connections the old-fashioned way, a la three drinks and drunken fumbling at sweaty frat parties.”

"You’re three months older than me,” Grantaire reminded him, “don’t talk about me like I don’t know what you youths are doing these days.”

“Age is just a number, Grandpa. But seriously, Grantaire, I can’t let this go on for any longer. Bad Tinder decisions are a central part of the modern experience. Like, what is the point of having tiny computers in our hands if not so we can get grainy dick pics from total strangers?”

“I’m sure there are a few more things smartphones do,” Joly said. “Unsolicited nudes aside, it’s a fascinating experience from a sociological perspective. I mean, it’s a trash app and half the people on it are trash people, but that’s also kind of the fun of using it to people watch? One guy got so upset when I wouldn’t respond to his sexts he sent me an entire essay on why I sucked—1931 words, no joke, I put into Word Counter and everything.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Grantaire said, groaning as he rolled over onto his back, “you’ve done it, you’ve convinced me. I’m doing it, I’m downloading your trash app.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, fellow millennial trash,” Bossuet said, laying a proud hand on Grantaire’s shoulders.

“No, don’t use that one,” Joly said, frowning as he peered over Grantaire’s shoulder at his photo gallery. “You look like you’re ready to either start crying or deck someone.”

“Don’t you guys have homework or something?”

“Don’t you?” Joly countered. “Besides, the only work I’ve got left is for Neurobiology and Cognition, and I’m dropping that anyways.”

“And thank fucking God,” Bossuet said. “We’ve been telling you to do it for ages, Joly.” While generally a scrupulous student, Joly had been complaining since the beginning of the semester about his instructor for Neurobiology and Cognition, who—in the two weeks since classes officially started—had managed to be both ableist and obliviously cissexist.

“Yeah, fuck that guy,” Grantaire agreed, a phrase that had practically become a mantra in the past few days. “You taking another class to fill that gap, or taking it easy for one semester, Mr. Premed?”

“I’m thinking of Performing Gender, actually,” Joly said. “Get the Art credit out of the way, and since it’s cross-listed with Gender Studies, there’s less of a chance that people are going to be terrible about preferred pronouns or something. Only problem would be getting in, but I know a girl who’s been thinking of dropping it, so...probably? Anyways, don’t distract from the subject—you can’t just post a picture of you where you’re not looking at the camera, that’s practically against the rules of Tinder or something. No one is going to swipe right if you look like you’re trying to evade a mugshot.”

“Truth,” Bossuet said solemnly. “There was a lady on Buzzfeed who said so and everything.”

“You know what?” Grantaire said, holding out his phone. “This is a terrible idea, but if you’re really that invested in my Tinder future, go for it—make me Internet attractive, kids.”

“Oh, man,” Bossuet said, not even waiting for Grantaire to finish before grabbing the phone out of his hands, “you are _so_ not to regret this, R.”

“Mm-hm,” Grantaire said, mind already elsewhere. For all that they liked to pretend at outrageousness, Joly and Bossuet were about as wild as one anxious premed and a prematurely balding sociologist could get—i.e., not at all. Grantaire was more than fine with playing along, but compared to the crowd he’d hung out with at his old college, it wasn’t like he was ever really worried. 

And anyways, it was hard to worry about dignity when you never had any to start with.

“And done! You can check it over, but I wouldn’t worry—J and I are masters at this, you’re safe as houses with us.”

“I’ll be sure to leave you a place in my will,” Grantaire said, scrolling through the photos Bossuet had uploaded for him. Most of them were obviously taken from Joly or Bossuet and sent to his phone—accusations of hipster art snobbery aside, Grantaire had never been a selfie type of person. They weren’t bad photos though, even if Grantaire can’t help but criticize Joly’s overreliance on filters. And then—

“Are those my paintings?”

“It shows that you’re more than just a pretty face,” Bossuet said. “Girls dig that stuff, apparently. Boys and kids of genders actually, unless they’re shallow philistine douchebags in which case they’re not worth your time, anyways.”

“Thanks for sparing me that, then,” Grantaire said dryly. “Okay, so um, how exactly does this work?”

“You swipe right if they seem like someone you’d want to meet and left if they’re too boring or pretentious looking. It’s pretty intuitive, really, you kind of just have to do it. ‘Fan of movies, running, and new bars?’” Joly said, frowning at the first profile that popped up. “ _And_ two gym selfies? Wow, original.” Swipe left . “Oh, hey, this one doesn’t say that much, but she’s cute. Ooh, and there’s a cat, too!”

“Are you seriously swiping for the cat?”

“It’s a cute cat! Just look at it! _And_ you got a match too, so obviously she’s got good taste. Even if it doesn’t work out, you can get a cute cat to pet out of it.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes, but he dutifully swiped right when Joly handed his phone back.

The next couple of profiles were all hard “no”s: a gym rat with impressive deltoids but also the hashtag #allgainsforChrist; a goth-looking kid with a Nietzsche quote in his bio (yikes); a self-described “writer, thinker, and erstwhile poet”—

Oh.

A blonde, severe-eyed boy stared out at him from his phone, not quite smiling but in a way that invokes Romantic poets and avenging angels from Renaissance paintings. His clothes and hair scream rich kid, but there’s something in his eyes that made Grantaire hesitate on that assumption, something sharp and fierce and bright.

In place of any personal details, his bio—Enjolras’s bio—reads “details available about meetings of Les Amis de L’ABC. Message for more information.”

“Oh my God,” Bossuet breathed. “Holy shit, are you fucking for real? Joly? Back me up? _”_

“Oh my God,” Joly said, less dramatic than Bossuet but still deeply shaken. “He has a Tinder? I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with having a Tinder, but I just thought—not to typecast or anything, but given his reputation…”

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire cut in, “but who exactly are we talking about?”

“God, I forgot how new you are to campus gossip sometimes. A tiny innocent baby, really.” Bossuet grinned at Grantaire. “This fine specimen of a man you’ll be swiping right on very soon is Enjolras: third year, political science with a minor in Law, Letters, and Society, terror of fuckbois and university administrators everywhere. Aries as all fuck out, in other words.”

“What,” Grantaire asked, “do you have his credit card and social security there too somewhere, or?”

Bossuet ignored him. “Tinder’s weird because I mean, first of all, Enjolras’s a pretty intense guy—I can see him getting into fights on Reddit in his free time, but hooking up, that’s just…no. Plus, word around campus is that he’s either ace or involved in some kind of poly situation with his roommates, which honestly wouldn’t surprise me even if Courfeyrac already has a partner and Combeferre would probably recite science fun facts in bed. They’ve apparently known each other since forever, and they already act like a social justice power throuple—Les Amis de L’ABC is this activism group they run, meets every Tuesday and Thursday at the Cafe Musain.”

“Les Amis for short,” Joly provided. “They do good work, too. I heard,” and here Joly’s eyes glowed, practically bouncing as he leaned forward, “they’re the reason the administration’s even talking about gender neutral bathrooms in all the dorms.

“Um, okay,” Grantaire said, laughing. “And how do you know all this already?”

“Oh,” Joly said, sitting loftily back on his heels, “I pay attention—”

“Joly stalks Combeferre,” Bossuet supplied. “Been doing it since, oh, the middle of first year. It’s actually kind of tragic, really—you guys have been in what, Jol, six classes together since then and you still haven’t managed to say hi to the guy?”

“It’s not my fault! He’s just—he’s a triple major while also a premed, and he’s still, like, top of the class too—it’s just not fair, you know? I want to know his magic study secrets too!”

"Mm-huh,” Bossuet said, stroking back Joly's hair. “Anytime you want to finally bring him over for dinner, babe.”

Rolling his eyes, Grantaire studied the picture on the screen: a tousle-haired blonde in a red hoodie, not quite smiling as he holds a hot chocolate between his hands. A few Christmas lights can be seen in the background, but they’re nothing compared to his eyes.

“He’s...hot,” he said.

“He’s hot?” Bossuet repeated. “Yeah, like volcanoes are hot, like the moon goes around the Earth, like Pluto is fucking far away from the sun. Dude’s hot, yeah, but he’s also super-intense. Like, on fire, but literally on fire, as in a forest fire, as in talk shit about welfare queens and I will fucking destroy you, burn through all your self-esteem until you’re cowering in a corner with what tiny shreds of dignity you have left.”

“You should join the poetry club, I’m sure they could always use another member. What, speaking from personal experience?”

“I’m a poet and I don’t even know it. Rhyming all the timing. And ha, no, thank God. I’ve seen it happen, though. Debategate 2k15— _oooh,_ boy. A night that will go down in history.”

“Rest in peace, Felix Tholomyes,” Joly said, placing a hand over his heart. “No one will really miss you.”

“Ripped him a new asshole and a half, left the carcass for scavengers to pick over. I heard he challenged Guelemere to a fight once, and dude backed down, he’s that scary.”

“Okay,” Grantaire said slowly. “And you think I should, what, try to talk to him? On a dating app?”

“You should go for it!” Joly said. “I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?”

Grantaire stared at him.

“Oh no,” Bossuet groaned, “now you’ve gotten him started.”

“The _worst_ thing that could happen,” Grantaire said, not to be deterred as he raised a finger, “obviously, is that this triggers a string of events that ends in the heat death of the universe, butterfly effect style, but before that the aliens come and turn us all into their zombie food supply and the global warming deniers take control of Congress, the end goodbye humanity, it was awful knowing you. Less long-scale and more personally relevant, he accepts and we get into some sort of conversation going except we have nothing in common and it’s awkward as fuck, and at some point I try to make some sort of joke but then _that_ goes so badly he blocks me and complains about sexual harassment, and because the University obviously doesn’t have the time to investigate that shit, they expel me and I have just where would my poor mother be then I ask you, where would she be _then._ ”

“You forgot the part where you end up homeless and panhandling on the Brooklyn Bridge.”

"That’s implied in the _college dropout_ part.”

“Oh, my apologies for not keeping with your logical and very much not melodramatic catastrophizing.” 

“It’s one swipe,” Joly said, sounding way too reasonable for someone who avidly read WebMD. “I mean, you might not even get a match.”

“Ha ha,” Grantaire said, flopping back on his mattress. “Fine, you win, but I told you so. When they come after me with the inevitable lawsuit, don’t tell me I didn’t warn—”

“Oh my God, it’s a match!” Bossuet screamed. “Send him a message send him a message!”

“What sort of revolution are you talking—proletariat or personal?”

“Wanna smash the patriarchy in my pants tonight?”

“You’re all assholes,” Grantaire said, but he was laughing as Joly and Bossuet wrestled his phone away.

Later—later, when the apartment was empty, Joly and Bossuet gone to Musichetta’s for the night—there was a ding on his phone. Grantaire glanced down at his phone, and found a message from Enjolras.

_Hello. I don’t know if you’re legitimately inquiring, but my friend made this account for me, and has thus been answering queries on my behalf._

_Les Amis de L’ABC meets Thursday evenings, 8pm, in the basement of the Cafe Musain. New recruits are welcome and encouraged to contribute in an honest but respectful manner. There will be coffee._

_If you are looking for a sexual encounter of any kind, please search elsewhere._

Huh. Weird dude, but at least he was upfront about it.

Then Musichetta sent a video of her cat to the groupchat, and all thoughts of dating apps and intense blonds were lost in the excitement of Quaxo’s laser pointer acrobatics.

This, Enjolras decided as he stared bleakly out at the crowd of students gathered in the basement of the Café Musain, was objectively all Courfeyrac’s fault. His first mistake had been agreeing to participate in Courfeyrac’s inane Greek life challenge in the first place. Given that it had been a joint effort by Courfeyrac and Combeferre, Enjolras supposes that, all things considered, he can forive himself that.

His second mistake had been trusting Courfeyrac with his phone.

It’d been two days before Enjolras caught on, but in those two days, Courfeyrac had matched him with not just all of Theta Delta Sigma, but also every bicurious Republican on campus. Some of them had sent him messages, clearly hoping to bait him into debating them, while others had sent…other things. Courfeyrac, as the undisputed bane of Enjolras’s life, had taken particular pleasure in responding to the latter with winky face emojis and quotes from _The Bee Movie._

Needless to say, damage control had taken longer than Enjolras anticipated.

And now here they were. Though Les Amis hadn’t exactly been struggling for attendance before—ten regular members was a decent count, regardless of what Courfeyrac might suggest—the room in front of them was currently close to if not over the fire capacity of the Musain basement. And while unlike Jehan or poor Marius, Enjolras had nothing against crowds, he knew for a fact that at least two of the faces in the gathered crowd belonged to Young Republican members. He knew, because they’d been at the joint Young Republicans/Young Democrats of America debate of 2015 where, against all better judgment and his complete disdain for two-party politics, Enjolras had agreed to debate Felix Tholomyes.

“It’s a good turnout, at least?” Combeferre offered.

“The slimmest of silver linings,” Enjolras muttered, then took the stage.

Under other circumstances, the speed with which the room fell silent would have been almost amusing. Watching the stragglers scramble towards their seats, Enjolras wondered what fraction of the crowd was genuinely interested in Les Amis versus what fraction was waiting for the chance to debate him on universal healthcare. 

Courfeyrac owed him so much coffee for this.

“Hello,” Enjolras said. “My name is Enjolras, and I am the co-founder of Les Amis de L’ABC, a campus organization dedicated to facilitating campus engagement with community activism. I am aware that a number of you may have learned about us through...unconventional channels. That was an unorthodox recruiting tactic that certain members,” pointedly staring at Courfeyrac, who only grinned in response, “thought would be somehow useful. The circumstances of that are irrelevant, though, and this meeting will not touch on that. Instead, I want to thank you all for coming here, and would like to speak a little about Les Amis.”

“As you may already know, Les Amis is a community service organization, one which hopes to serve as a key fount for social justice engagement both on campus and off. As an organization, our goals are the ones that have driven reformers through the centuries: liberty, equality, and solidarity between the oppressed. There are a number of different projects we’re currently involved in through various vectors of social justice—if you have any questions, Combeferre is our official historian, and he’d be glad to point you towards activities that match your interests and desired level of commitment.”

Enjolras reached for his water bottle. In front of him, fifty-some faces watched as he unscrewed the top, tilted his head to drink, placed the bottle down again with a dull clunk of stainless steel against wood.

 _You can’t always assume the worst of people,_ Combeferre’s voice said in his mind, low and gently chiding. _Give people a chance—they might surprise you._

“Any questions?”

In the back, a pink-haired student— _he/his,_ the nametag on his shirt read—tentatively raised his hand.

“Yes?”

“Um, hey.” The nervousness pitches his voice even higher than it already is, marking him indubiously as _first-year_ if it weren’t already obvious from the ridiculous baby face and the copy of Hobbes he fiddles with. “So like first all of, I’m all in for fighting imperialism and misogyny, but um, well, my question’s not exactly about that. It’s just...I don’t if it’s just me, but I found out about this because I matched with you on Tinder, so…”

In the back, Combeferre sighed. Mercifully, Courfeyrac doesn’t laugh, though it’s a clear struggle judging by the expression on his face.

Enjolras gritted his teeth, counted slowly to three, and forced himself to look at the boy who had asked the question.

“Yes,” he said. “Like I said, it was part of a highly unorthodox recruitment tactic developed by my friends. As I made clear in my description, I am uninterested in romantic or sexual relationships, and any questions concerning sexual encounters should go elsewhere. Now, if we have any other questions—”

“What kind of shampoo do you use?”

This time, Enjolras didn’t bother to dampen his irritation as he glared at the girl responsible for the question, who all but squeaked as she pushed back in her chair.

“I’m sorry! I really am interested in the issues, I just…you’ve always got really nice hair, and I always wondered—”

“When Enjolras asked about questions,” Combeferre said, “he meant questions pertaining to the meeting or Les Amis. Personal questions can wait until the meeting is over.” 

“And believe me,” Courfeyrac, the traitor, said, grinning as he leaned against the wall, “there are a _lot_ of stories to tell, but only after you reach Tier 3 of the Les Amis Illuminati inner circle. Can’t go giving our trade secrets to anyone who asks, can we.”

There was a faint ripple of laughter at that, more nervous than anything, but it seemed to lift the tension at least slightly, and for all that this was objectively his fault, Enjolras couldn’t help feeling a wave of gratitude towards Courfeyrac. Even when they were children, Courf had always been good with people in a way Enjolras.

Another hand goes up, this time from another of the baby-faced freshman by the pink-haired boy.

“Um, so this is only sort of related, but...did you really compare castrating Felix Tholomyes to a public service?”

“It was a highly hyped debate after a very tense semester. I... overreacted.”

“No, that guy’s a dick,” someone else said. “It _would_ be a public service. We should try to get like, a petition for the administration to do it. Change dot com or something.”

In the front row, Enjolras was gratified to see the Young Republicans turn pale.

“Toxic masculinity has never looked more attractive,” Courfeyrac added. “What? Just because I’m in a relationship doesn’t mean I don’t have eyes.”

“Bigotry in a pretty package,” Combeferre said dryly. “If anyone is interested, the philosophy and the gender studies departments have been putting together a conference on masculinity in the twenty-first century. They’re accepting panel proposals until October 15th, and they’d especially be interested in greater undergraduate involvement—if not presentations, then at least attendance. The food they cater is much better than the dining hall at any rate.”

“Yeah, okay,” a dark-haired girl in a leather jacket said, “I mean I’m sure it’ll be super interesting, but like, how much is that going to help? We keep on getting all these speakers and talks on campus and it’s supposed to do something, but at the end of it, what does that really do? Guys like Tholomyes, they go around talking about how much they respect women, but you know when they talk about open relationships it’s only about their side of the deal. Education is an important step, but that has to come with actual consequences for being a jackass, you know? And you can’t get that unless the administration gives a damn about more than however the fuck Forbes magazine ranks them.”

“Feminist Agenda is partnering with the art department to do an on-campus display about it, and I know there are a couple of kids in theater who’ve talked about flash mobbing to raise awareness. Okay, so technically the flash mobbing idea’s supposed to be a secret, so don’t tell anyone I said that, but if you drop by the theater department 3:30 Wednesday, don’t be surprised if you shanghai-ed into performance arting it around campus. Which, okay, still doesn’t fix the whole problem, but it’s still raising awareness and maybe if we get it to be disruptive enough the administration might actually notice. Not ideal, yeah, but hey, we’re open to all ideas here?”

“What about working with student government?” the shampoo girl asked. “I know most of us give them shit for being career-hungry yuppies, but there are a couple of them who are doing it for more than a line on a resume—it’s just again, the whole administration being terrible and obstructive like. Graduate student council’s got an even worse deal, with the whole research and being indentured labor for the university thing, but they’re pretty decent people too. I don’t know how much it’ll really do, but if we got a bunch of us working together—”

“Well,” Courfeyrac said afterwards as they walked back in the brisk fall air, “that went well, don’t you think?”

“You’re still buying brunch,” Enjolras told him. Besides him, Combeferre shrugged, hands up in a _what-can-you-do_ gesture, as though he weren’t benefiting just as much from this turn of events.

“He’s right, you know,” Combeferre said, when it was just the two of them back in the apartment, Courfeyrac out to spend the night at Jehan’s. “All personal questions aside, we did get quite a number of new members. A few of them have already signed up for The ABC Brigade.” Combeferre sounded quietly pleased about this, and rightfully so—for all that children loved Courfeyrac and Enjolras supported the cause of early childhood education, there was a reason Combeferre was the one reading Dr. Seuss to low-income kindergarteners.

“Congratulations for The ABC Brigade, then.” Enjolras lifted his mug, Combeferre clinking his against it in a toast. “I still can’t believe you’re siding with Courfeyrac, though.”

“Enjolras, you’ve known us long enough to know there are no sides here, only different shades of the same colors. Courfeyrac’s methods are...well, very much Courfeyrac, but they did work here, didn’t they? Les Amis has gained more members, many of whom seem quite passionate about the cause, and ThetaSig is that step closer to winning a significant amount of money for charity. The free brunch is a lovely surprise, though.”

“Playing both sides, Ferre?”

“The perks of being Switzerland.”

“I’m not listening to anything from a guy who steals lines from _Twilight.”_

“And yet, of the three of us here, only one of us still has a collector’s edition of the series.”

“Courtesy of Courfeyrac, and the only reason they haven’t been burnt yet. Remember when he would dress up as Alice and drag us to the release party?”

“Careful, he’s going to get ideas if you bring that up around him.” Combeferre hummed, sipping his tea. “I did hear that ThetaSig is soundly beating DKE so far, if that’s any consolation. Montparnasse is livid, apparently.”

“Montparnasse is a narcissist who thinks having halfway okay facial structure excuses him from being a decent human being. If I knew signing up for a dating ego would deflate his ego like that, I would have told everyone at the meeting about the time he told Lillian Narayan she couldn’t know she wasn’t bi unless she tried sleeping with a man first.” Enjolras paused, contemplative. “And we could have built an effigy of him and set it on fire outside his dorm.”

“You know,” Combeferre sighed, with the deep weariness of someone who had long since resigned himself to the situation, “sometimes, I wish you would took just a little less pleasure in antagonizing people.”

"Do you really, though?"

"Yes," Combeferre said, deeply unimpressed. "I do."

One of the difficulties of transferring schools in the middle of his degree, Grantaire was quickly learning, was the sheer amount of paperwork to be filled. More so even than finding roommates or the tricky business of talking around why he had transferred in the first place, the process of transferring credits and figuring out class equivalences was a seemingly endless one.

Even now, several weeks into the semester, Grantaire still got occasional calls and letters from Student Affairs, asking him about the blanks on his transcript. He gave the same response every time, the one he’d worked out with his old advisor before transferring: yes, there were some irregularities, but those had already been talked through, mitigating circumstances, et cetera. It was a fairly uncomplicated explanation as far as Grantaire could tell, but every few weeks it seemed like someone else needed to call and confirm that yes, he knew his last semester at the Delacroix Institute for the Arts, hadn’t counted and he was technically still a freshman, was that all they wanted to know or were there other examples of how he’d utterly fucked up they wanted to remind him of again?

It was an exhausting process, and after he got off the phone, all Grantaire wanted to do was take a nice, long nap.

He didn’t, though. There was homework to be done, several days’ worth of dirty dishes in the sink and his laundry running through the basement washing machine, and it was all of seven o’clock—

So, after a few moments of calming himself down— _in, out, in, out, and count to three—_ Grantaire washed his face, pulled his hair back in a ponytail, and lit himself a joint.

His old therapist—the one his mother had briefly forced him to see, after Delacroix sent him home—had warned him against it, saying that it was easy, at this stage of his recovery, for him to displace the addiction onto something else instead. But Grantaire had seen plenty of AA veterans rolling cigarettes and spitting into cans that he didn’t think it was that much of a deal, really, if he rolled one up every now and then. Weed wasn’t as good as alcohol anyways, and the smoke made his eyes water, so Grantaire was pretty sure there wasn’t much chance of actually getting addicted to the stuff. And it helped: not completely, not the way the alcohol had, but enough so that it was easier to think again, thoughts clearing as acrid smoke filled the room.

He’d changed into pajamas and was starting in on the stacks of dishes in the sink when there was the familiar jangle of keys, followed by even more familiar sound of Bossuet swearing when the doorknob refused to open. Grantaire sighed, before rinsing the soaps scuds off his arms; he admired the persistence, but honestly, at this point, Bossuet really should stop trying and accept that their front door had a personal grudge against him.

"Hey,” he said as Joly and Bossuet walked in, both pink-cheeked and slightly ruffled from the wind. “You guys back from your club meeting?”

“Just got out, actually, though I think there’re still some people back talking at Cafe Musain. You should have come, R—your man was totally in his element there, you would have loved it.”

“My man?”

“He means Enjolras,” Joly said as he shrugged his way out of his outer coat—Joly got cold easily and Bossuet was only slightly overprotective, so Joly had spent the last few weeks under at least three layers of wool. “It was really cool, actually—I wasn’t at Debategate, but I saw the videos, and he’s actually like that in real life too, did you know? There was a moment when someone mentioned the new after-hours security on campus, and he just went _off_ about racial profiling and gated communities, tag-teaming with this kid called Marius halfway through. Combeferre had to stop them after ten minutes, but it was great anyways.”

“Yeah?” Grantaire asked. “And how was your man in his element?”

“Bossuet was a delight, as always,” Joly said, leaning up to plant a kiss on his boyfriend’s cheek. “But to answer your question, Combeferre was lovely, too. He didn’t talk all that much, but whenever he did, it was always something super smart. They’re all really smart, actually, everyone has their own areas of expertise, and they’re all so committed—Combeferre does mostly education, he runs a group that helps lower-income kids with literacy skills. Marius is helping translate for a local immigration center, Courfeyrac is involved in this organization called DayDreamers and their goal is arts education for low-income immigrant kids, and from what I hear, it sounds like something you might be into! You should come, too.”

Grantaire blinked. Joly, outside of all his many and variegated medical problems, was a generally cheerful guy, but right now, his beam had all the radiance of a small sun.

“Oh my God,” he groaned, “you’ve gone and gotten all activist-y on me, haven’t you?”

“That’s our Joly,” Bossuet said, affectionately ruffling Joly’s hair, “always ready to jump into things headfirst and do good. But seriously, R, they’re a cool bunch and Courfeyrac’s organization seems right up your alley. I know you’re going for the whole disaffected nihilist thing, but I’ve seen you feed the strays in the alley behind Dragon House, I know you care.”

“It’s a strategic thing,” Grantaire said. “I’m building up the ranks of my secret cat army for when we take over America, and now that you know that, I have to kill you.”

“And just like that, my whole impression of you as a half-way decent person has vanished,” Bossuet said, a hand over his heart. “Seriously, though, you should come, if only you can finally meet your mystery man! I’ve seen the way you stalk Enjolras on Twitter and Instagram.”

“It’s an anthropological interest,” Grantaire said, almost honestly. He’d never met someone who could post so many multi-paragraph manifestos yet reveal so little about themselves. “He’s...interesting.”

“Is ‘interesting’ code for hot?”

“I’ve said he’s hot since day one, you don’t need to act like it’s some big deal you’re trying to get out of me.”

“Oh, c’mon Grantaire,” Joly said, tugging on his arm, “you should come, at least once! Stalking Enjolras or not, it’d be something to do Thursday nights instead of staying in and inhaling your arsenic paints.”

And—well. Faced with that megawatt smile in combination with Joly’s unfairly big puppy dog eyes, there was no other way to answer, was there?

“Fine,” Grantaire sighed. “You’re menaces and I’m completely blaming you when this goes all wrong, but I’ll go.”

Once, during fall semester of sophomore year, Grantaire had spent a month sleeping on the couch of a dive bar. It’d been a weird, liminal time, right after Marie dumping him and a week or so before waking up naked behind frat row, so Grantaire’s memories were a little hazy, but he remembered musty walls and flickering lights and the distinct impression of being trapped in a Parisian sewer.

The basement of Café Musain was a little like that, though thankfully it was at least far cleaner than The Drunken Boat—admittedly not a high standard to clear, but an important one nonetheless. In the middle of the room, a group of fold-out chairs were lined in neat rows, with a table by the back holding the typical collegiate spread of coffee, La Croix, and cookies (homemade, too, from the look of them). At the front of room, a tall, dark-skinned boy dressed like a professor—Combeferre, as Joly was quick to inform him—was sitting behind the front desk, sipping from a red, cat-patterned mug while typing on his laptop.

“And that’s Cosette,” Joly said, pointing at a blonde girl in a glittery blue sweater, “Marius,” the gangly redhead next to her who seemed to blush every time Cosette looked up at him, “Courfeyrac,” curly-haired and animated, grinning as his hands sketched shapes through the air, “and Jehan - pronouns are they/them, though they’re pretty nice if you mess up a bit at first,” a tall blond seated next to and smiling fondly at Courfeyrac, long hair pulled into a braid and plaited with flowers throughout. “Cosette and Marius are pretty new, but the rest of them have basically been here since the start.”

“Okay,” Grantaire said, stirring his coffee. They’d chosen seats near the back, more for Grantaire’s comfort than anything else, but the position also meant the bonus advantage of first pick of the refreshments. “And where’s our fearless leader, the man, the myth, the legend responsible for all this of this?”

Which was, of course, when the door to the basement had to swing dramatically open.

Almost at once, all eyes snapped to the figure silhouetted in the doorway. There was a moment of stage musical drama as Grantaire’s eyes adjust to the light—and then, oh shit, but he was pretty. Golden hair and blue eyes and the kind of facial structure that Grantaire had thought only existed in classical art. He’s not much taller than Grantaire, but there’s an intensity to his eyes, the way he stands and surveys the room in one cool gaze.

“Close your mouth, you’re going to unhinge your jaw,” Joly said, patting his shoulder. Grantaire took a brief moment to confirm that no, his mouth hadn’t actually been open before turning back to his so-called friends.

“I can’t believe—you could have at least warned me!”

“Dude, we totally did,” Bossuet said, not even bothering to hide his laugh. “Should have believed us back then, you disaster bisexual.”

“Fuck you,” Grantaire hissed, but only half-heartedly. The rest of his attention was still on Enjolras, walking to the quasi-podium at the front of the room. Pixelated and glaring out from a Tinder photo, Enjolras had already been attractive; in 3D and full-spectrum color, he was simply unfair.

A silent exchange of looks between Combeferre and Enjolras, and then Combeferre was standing up as Enjolras took the stage.

“Hello,” Enjolras said. He had a nice voice, level and assured in a way that commanded attention. “For new attendees, we are Les Amis de l’ABC, a student organization dedicated to promoting grassroots activism both on campus and off of it. For those interested in volunteer work, Combeferre has a full list of affiliates and can direct you accordingly. Last week, we talked about the upcoming elections, and potential ideas for increasing viewer registration and turnout—”

“Elections?” Grantaire whispered.

“Mayoral elections,” Joly whispered back. “It’s okay, we didn’t know they were going on either, but Enjolras is really into local elections and change radiating upwards instead of trickling down. I think he’s also canvassing for one of the candidates?”

“The administration’s statement last week, which would allow the Young Patriots for Truth or whatever they’re calling themselves these days continue to invite white supremacists and transphobes to campus. The administration is defending it as free speech in the official statement, which is patently bullshit when they refuse to recognize the adjuncts’ right to unionize.”

A small chorus of “yeah!” and “fuck them!” sounded through the room. Enjolras didn’t quite smile, but his expression softened a little, a shepherd quietly proud of his sheep.

“In terms of immediate action, we’ll be reaching out to potentially interested teachers in the next few days to see if there’s anyone willing to sign a faculty-led petition as well as to see if anyone would be willing to offer a written statement—”

“Oh, of course,” Grantaire said. “A petition and some editorials in the student paper, that’s what’s going to change their minds.”

“Excuse me?” Enjolras said. And, oh shit, he was glaring at him now, and how was it possible to look so hot and murderous at once?

In for a penny, in for a pound, Grantaire supposed. If he was going to fuck himself over, best he did it now before he got his hopes up.

“I mean,” he said, acutely aware of how much his voice carried in the space, “it’s not that I’m against what you’re doing, but like, a student letter? That’s the solution? The administration doesn’t care, and they’re not going to listen to whatever a bunch of college students say. Petitions, emails…I mean, sure, they make you feel better, like you actually can do something, but outside of that? When has the university ever actually cared what student think?”

“That,” Enjolras said, each word slow and steady, “is the stupidest thing I’ve heard all week.”

“Yeah?” Grantaire asked. “How so? I’m just being realistic here.”

There was a glint in Enjolras’s eyes, and his mouth was opening, words coming out, a litany of examples and rhetoric on the importance of continued action, but Grantaire didn’t hear them, lost in the way Enjolras's eyes flashed when he glared at him, the shape of Enjolras’s mouth as he systematically ripped apart Grantaire's logic.

(In retrospect, that was the moment he should have known he was a goner.)

Grantaire was dreaming of barricades and narrow streets and beautiful, blue-eyed revolutionaries when the sound of someone thumping on the door jolted him out of sleep.

Bleary-eyed, shirt on inside-out, Grantaire stumbled his way to the front door.

“Hello, Grantaire,” Combeferre said, looking far too awake for fuck-o-clock in the morning on a weekend. Beside him stood Enjolras, looking for all the world like an upset cat dragged to his doorstep. “I hope we didn’t wake you.”

“Um,” Grantaire said. A dozen questions were running through his head, but the one that came out of his mouth right then was, “how did you know where I live?”

“Courfeyrac and Bahorel know each other from fraternity events, and Bahorel is friends with Joly and Bossuet, and so a few Facebook messages later, here we are,” Combeferre said, as though this was a perfectly normal sequence of events and not borderline stalker behavior. “Thank you for coming to the meeting last night, by the way—it’s always nice to see new faces around. I would stay, but I unfortunately have a tutoring session in half an hour, so I’ll leave you two to it, alright?”

And then he just walked away, as though that too, was a perfectly normal thing people just did, stranding your roommate on the doorstep of someone he’d been verbally eviscerating less than twelve hours ago.

“Um,” Grantaire said.

In front of him, Enjolras shifted on his feet. It was weird, seeing him here outside of the faded basement lights of the Cafe Musain, no crisp denim jacket full of patches or combat boots, but rather here, hair still obviously morning tousled and standing on his doorstep in a battered pair of jeans and an _Against Me!_ t-shirt.

He was still unfairly hot, but that didn’t make it any less surreal.

“I’m sorry for yelling at you.”

Grantaire blinked. “You’re sorry, or Combeferre made you say you’re sorry?”

Enjolras made a small sound that could almost have been a laugh. “A little of both,” he admitted. “I still think you’re wrong as fuck and that your view of the world is an unnecessarily pessimistic one that leads to the same kind of apathy responsible for half our problems today, but...” He huffed, blowing a strand of hair out of his face. He did have really nice hair, Grantaire realized; it was a wonder people weren’t asking about his shampoo all the time. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper and snap at you. I’m sorry about that.”

“Um. Apology accepted then?”

“Thanks.”

They both stood there a moment longer, neither quite meeting the other’s eyes.

“Do you want to come in?” Grantaire asked, the words out before his brain could catch up with his mouth. Oh shit _shit,_ had he just invited Enjolras inside his apartment, when was the last time he fucking washed his dishes, and he was still in his fucking _pajamas—_ “I mean—you don’t have to—I’m sure you’re busy—”

“I have a study session at eleven, actually,” Enjolras said, “but I was going to get breakfast first. Would you want to join me? Combeferre would probably want me to buy you coffee for causing you, and I quote, ‘excessive emotional distress.’” 

“Oh, well, if Combeferre would want you to,” Grantaire said, still a little dazed by the entire situation, “I won’t turn down free food.”

Enjolras smiled. And it was such a small, slight thing, but it made something blossom in Grantaire’s chest, a small, quiet warmth he couldn’t help but hold close.

“Dude,” Bossuet said, eyes wide open as he stared at him. “And then he asked you out for coffee? He bought you coffee?”

“It was coffee, not a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates. Also, you’re missing the part where Combeferre basically talked him into doing all of that.”

“Still! When is the last time you ever heard of Enjolras apologizing to anyone? You think he apologized to Montparnasse after he dragged his ass into the dirt? This is like, a historical event, R. We need to record it for future generations. A souvenir for the wedding, of course?”

“Can I be a bridesmaid? Or, no, wait, maybe he’s one of those people who doesn’t believe in marriage as an institution? Either way, I get bridesmaid rights.”

“Congrats, R, you’re going to date the scariest pre-law in all of Myriel University!”

“Oh my God,” Grantaire groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. “It was literally just a coffee and a croissant. People buy each other coffee all the time, platonically and everything. _I’ve_ bought both of you coffee, incredibly platonic coffee!”

“Bahorel knows Courfeyrac, right?” Joly asked, not even pretending to acknowledge Grantaire’s words. “I mean, we could always ask Bahorel to talk to Courfeyrac, see if he knows anything about what kind of coffee Enjolras likes, and then go from there.”

“Joly, you genius! Seduction through caffeine, the ultimate college strategy. We should send him a bouquet of Red Bull and say it’s from R.”

“Or you could also not do that, and let me have some semblance of dignity left?”

“No can-do, man,” Bossuet said, grinning. “We’re your friends, and there’s no fucking way we’re going to let this die down.”

“It was just a coffee, guys,” Grantaire groaned, covering his face with an arm. “I can’t believe I’m friends with you.”

And if he smiled just a little as he stared at Enjolras’s photo on Tinder—then, well, Joly and Bossuet didn’t have to know that.

Enjolras was glaring at a diagram of the cellular membrane, half-seriously hoping that doing so would make it yield its secrets, when his phone lit up. 

_thanks for the coffee, by the way_

_You’re welcome._

_Though you should be thanking Combeferre, he’s the one who made me realize I was going overboard_

_Also, why are sending me this on Tinder?_

_um_

_bc i dont have you on any other social media?_

_I’ll send you a Facebook request_

_The less time I spend on this godforsaken app, the better_

_haha sure_

_its a pretty dismal place, so valid_

_why do you have a tinder account anyways?_

_Courfeyrac._

_that_

_actually explains nothing???_

_It’s a long story._

_We actually had to go into it during a meeting a few weeks back because people kept on asking_

_ooh_

_do tell?_

_> :D_

Enjolras glanced at his desk, the pile of bio notes in Marius’s careful script and the layers of urban planning papers that lay underneath. A part of him—the part that sounded suspiciously like Combeferre—chided him that Principles of Biology was a mandatory class and he had to pass it in order to graduate, no matter how mind-numbingly boring the lectures were.

But, well, Combeferre had also dragged him to Grantaire’s doorstep this morning. “You could at least _try_ to be moderately approachable” had been his parting words, and what—as Courfeyrac had so assiduously reminded him—was more approachable than talking to strangers on a dating app?

S _o Courfeyrac’s a member of Theta Delta Sigma, and Greek life decided to have an interfraternity challenge—_

Somehow, despite his near evisceration in the first meeting and general status as a killjoy pessimist, Grantaire found himself spending Thursday nights in the basement of the Cafe Musain. It was a slow, uncertain thing—there was still homework and requirements to muddle through—but somehow, by the middle of semester, Grantaire found himself a regular fixture at the Les Amis meetings.

Contrary to Bossuet and Joly’s teasing, this was only partially due to his (admittedly growing) crush on Enjolras; while they were still incredibly too idealistic and occasionally kind of intimidatingly passionate, the members of Les Amis were, admittedly, not bad company either.

Combeferre generally brought pastries which, after attending three or so meetings, Grantaire learned were largely homemade, which greatly increased Grantaire’s opinion of Les Amis’s unofficial second-in-command (Enjolras would deny that was any kind of hierarchy at place in Les Amis, but it was clear that the club’s existence balanced between Combeferre’s organization skills and Courfeyrac’s social savvy to support their chief). No, hopeless crush aside, five weeks in Grantaire had found himself—against his own expectations—becoming friends with Les Amis.

It was an odd feeling. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had friends at Delacroix, but those had been friends to smoke and get drunk with, the art kids who’d bought a little too hard into the tortured artist lifestyle. His Delacroix friends had been nice enough, but they’d also been fundamentally partying friends, not ones who’d help you through Kant or bring you baked goods without even a hint of weed in them. People like that—people with their lives together—weren’t friends with Grantaire.

And yet. Grantaire had been nervous at first and, okay, maybe just a little bit intimidated, but the longer he spent around Les Amis, the more they seemed less like unreachable ideals of having-their-shit-together and more like…weird college students with a passion for social justice.

Combeferre was, as Joly had said, a triple major and as intimidatingly intelligent, but he also dressed like an extra from a period drama and vehemently rejected the idea of kombucha. Courfeyrac was surprisingly good at math for a theater major, and more than game to help Grantaire struggle through problem sets during lulls in meetings. Bahorel had the best biceps and the worst dirty jokes of anyone Grantaire had ever met; Feuilly worked two jobs and got inordinately excited over Eastern European history, to the point where even a passing mention of Poland would get him started on a ten-minute rant. Cosette, generally the human equivalent of a fluffy vanilla cake, sparked to firecracker life whenever talking about child abuse and exploitation, while Marius always went noticeably quiet when talk circled around to their families. There was a story there, Grantaire knew, but looking at the way the two stood around each other, hands almost always twined, he thought that they probably had it under control.

It got to a point that Grantaire didn’t even question why, on a sunny Sunday morning when everyone else was sleeping, he was instead on his knees in a greenhouse, listening to Jehan explain the best soil conditions for perennials and the benefits of indoor gardening for mental health. Grantaire had been uncertain at first, but Jehan was surprisingly good company, managing to make any silence comfortable with a small smile or touch on the shoulder.

And then, of course, there was Enjolras.

“You know,” Combeferre said as they walked back to their apartment, the evening air crisp around them, “have you considered maybe being a little less...confrontational during meetings?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Enjolras said.

Courfeyrac, like the little shit he was. “I mean, okay, and the government has our best interests in mind, always has and always will. I mean, as amusing as it’s been to watch you and Grantaire during meetings, it’s been getting a little played out recently, E. Like, not trying to tell you how to live your life or anything, but you know could, just, you know, not say anything? Might be a little better for your blood pressure.”

“He’s infuriating! He won’t take anything seriously, deliberately provokes me—”

“And yet you’re still talking to him,” Combeferre observed. “Why is that, exactly, Enjolras?”

“Because he’s not an idiot, it’s obvious he isn’t, and if I could just get him to listen for one second, one fucking second, without him taking it as a joke as some—”

Enjolras stopped. “What?” he asked, eyeing his roommates. For all that they had grown up together, there were still gaps between the three of them, and there were times when Combeferre and Courfeyrac could carry on something entire conversations in an entire glance. “What are you two planning?” 

“Nothing,” Combeferre and Courfeyrac said in eerie unison, in a tone of voice he knew from long experience meant they were definitely planning something. Enjolras considered calling them out on their bluff, but knowing from experience how well that would go, settled for glaring at them instead.

Inside his jacket pocket, his phone buzzed.

_4 the record_

_i_ _was 100% playing devils advocate on the healthcare point_

_I’m sorry, who is this again?_

_WOW cold_

_arctic, freezing cold_

_if i brought u coffee next time, would u magically remember?_

_Coffee and cake, and I’ll consider it._

_u drive a hard, hard bargain_

_but such r the tolls we must pay on the hard road to friendship ig_

_If it’s at the Musain, we can share the cake_

_Their slices could feed a family of four_

_:D_

_< 3 <3 <3_

_oh cmon_

_u gotta do it back now_

_No._

_:(_

_:’(_

_;w;_

_…fine_

_< 3_

_:D!!!!!_

_< 3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 _

Friday afternoon after his meeting with admissions found Grantaire in the rarest of the circumstances, the mythical unicorn of post-advisory moods—not completely dejected and devoid of all hope for the future. Maybe, dare he say it, even a little happy?

Technically, Grantaire had very little to do with the success of the meeting—that had been all Professor Rodney (“please, call me Jane”), who’d reviewed his portfolio and vouched for his right to waive the prerequisite classes for the Art Major. Which, okay, Grantaire intellectually knew he deserved—abysmal GPA or not, Delacroix was an art school, and almost all his coursework there had been studio classes—but, still. Jane had been so adamant as she argued for his artistic ability, passionate in a way that reminded him of Enjolras. It was nice, Grantaire supposed, to have someone feel like that about him.

And yeah, he still had to take the gen ed classes Myriel required for graduation, but now he could paint what he actually wanted instead of reviewing shading techniques in Figure Drawing I. It was a victory, and after months of bitching to Joly and Bossuet about admissions, Grantaire was going to take it with all the goddamn glee he had.

“Hey so pals, comrades, brothers-in-arms,” Grantaire said, opening the door, “you won’t believe—”

Comic book _screech!_ as Grantaire did a sitcom double-take. “Um, hey. Did I miss the memo on the party and the business casual dress code, or…?”

“Hello, Grantaire,” Musichetta said, smiling as she stepped forward for cheek kissed. Her pumps had to be a solid five inches for her to do that without leaning up, and she smelled like perfume, something floral and sweet. “No party so far technically, but you’re free to crash anyways. Our plans are very flexible.”

"Our plans are literally just grabbing dinner and then coming back,” Bossuet corrected, placing a hand on Musichetta’s shoulder. “But yeah, the sentiment stands—want to come along? La Marseille has a student special going on this week, so we’re eating bougie tonight.”

Bossuet grinned, bright and guileless. He was wearing dress shoes, the pair he only broke out for job interviews and distant relatives’ weddings, and a polo shirt that he’d inevitably spill soup on by that end of the night and dress shoes. Musichetta, always the best-dressed of their motley trio, was stunning in a purple dress and a braided updo, accessories matched with all the precision of a fashion student. Joly had taken out his favorite cane, the one with mica down the sides of the dark wood.

“Nah,” Grantaire said, shaking his head. “Wouldn’t want to fourth wheel you guys.”

“Oh, boo,” Musichetta said, giving him her patented Musichetta pout. “You know you’re always welcome.”

Joly nodded. “It’s not fourth-wheeling if we invite you there. Like Chetta said, the more the merrier!”

“Sounds like something you’d also say about an orgy, but okay. Look, I appreciate it, but even if I wanted to go, you know I couldn’t—I’m a bohemian, all my pants are sweatpants or either covered in paint.”

“You could always borrow Bossuet’s clothes,” Musichetta pointed out. “You’d look like a time-traveler from the 80s, but you’d technically pass the dress code.” 

“Tempting, but no thanks. Go be disgusting and couple-y over actual warm food for a few hours. I promise I won’t let the place burn down.”

“If you’re sure…”

“Joly, I promise you, I am absolutely, completely okay with staying home for one night. Just bring me cake if you feel bad, and I promise I’ll forgive you, okay?”

“A whole cake,” Bossuet promised as Grantaire ushered them out. “The most expensive one on the menu, and an entire tarte Tatin too.”

And then they were gone, and it was just Grantaire and the empty apartment again.

Making himself dinner took a good half-hour or so, a rerun of _House MD_ playing in the background as Grantaire scraped scrambled eggs out of Bossuet’s ostensibly non-stick pan. House was sipping a whiskey and brooding over something straight-white-male-genius-related as Grantaire finished the dishes, stacking them slowly and deliberately to make the task last long. But Bossuet and Joly were good roommates, and there was only so much time he could spend scrubbing the same three plates.

The dishes were clean, his laundry pile still at least two weeks from being full, and his professors had been merciful for once and let them off without readings for the weekend.

There was always TV or Netflix, but Grantaire knew those were only partial solutions. If it was good enough, a show stop his mind from twisting itself into anxious knots for a few hours, but that didn’t touch the other thing—that deep, lingering ache that came from unchosen aloneness. The feeling, one he’d somehow never managed to shake off since childhood, of always watching from the sidelines, an eternal background character in everyone else’s lives.

For a moment, he considered texting Joly and Bossuet—but no, that would be pathetic, they were on a date, they didn’t owe him to come back by some set time. He was an adult; he could survive a few hours by himself.

Of course he could.

Nothing on Facebook. A few stray Tweets past his Twitter, one or two Instagram stories from artists he vaguely remembered following—and then nothing.

Fuck it. He wasn’t going to sit here, being pathetic and feeling sorry for himself like some kind of sad puppy waiting for its owners to return home.

Zipping his coat and lacing up his boots, Grantaire walked out into the cold.

_hye_

_*hey_

_ugh sorry its the um_

_its late_

Halfway through the third chapter of _The Wretched of the Earth,_ Enjolras frowned at his phone. Grantaire might have been an erratic texter, but…well. Texting out of the blue like this was still out of character.

_Are you drunk?_

_no!_

_I mean_

_not yet I thikn?_

_*thik_

_**think_

_wow um yeah ok_

_maybe a littel drukn_

_there was_

_a party and threr was_

_oh wow yeah um_

_def drunk_

_Where are you?_

_DKE?_

_why_

_Stay there._

“Enjolras?” Combeferre said, glancing over from the couch, knitting needles and half-finished scarf in his lap. “It’s almost midnight—where are you going?”

“Out,” Enjolras said, slipping his keys into his pocket. “I’ll be right back—there’s just something I need to do first.”

Enjolras remembered last stepping inside the DKE frat house in freshman year, and the place hasn’t changed much since then—still a dim-lit mess of sweaty bodies and blaring music and shouted conversations, weed smoke so heavy in the air he could practically feel himself hotboxing off of it. As in freshman year, Enjolras was vividly struck by the temptation to light a match and watch the entire health hazard go up in flames.

But Grantaire was somewhere in here, and given DKE’s less-than-stellar reputation for spiked drinks and respect for bodily autonomy, Enjolras couldn’t leave him here. 

“Grantaire?” he yelled, barely hearing his voice over the din. Strobe lights flashed in his face, a frenetic chorus of searing neon colors. No Grantaire by the drinks or in the kitchen, no one by the beer pong table set up in a corner, nothing by the crowd of white boys loudly comparing sexcapades by the stairwell—

He found Grantaire half passed out on a couch in the basement, two girls drunkenly and furiously making out on the other end of the couch. Enjolras was across the room in Olympic record time, step on the arm of the DKE boy filming the couple.

“Grantaire?”

The lump on the couch stirred, one bleary eye slowly cracking open.

“Enjolras? Wh—why’re you here?”

“You texted me,” Enjolras said, kneeling now so that they were at eye-level. Up close, Grantaire smelled like vodka and smoke, his eyes not quite focusing as he blinked up at Enjolras. “You seemed pretty drunk, so I thought I might as well check up on you.”

“I’m not drunk. Only had two, three? Three drinks, tops. Not drunk. Just—just gimme a second.”

“Of course you’re not drunk.” Enjolras bent down, looping one of Grantaire’s arms around his shoulders; Grantaire stumbled a little as he stood up, but stabilized quickly. “This is just you being naturally clumsy. Very Bella Swan.”

“Wow, okay, rude,” Grantaire said. “Just because I’m not as pretty doesn’t mean I can’t be a vampire too. I’d be like, all—I’ve got fangs and superpowers and I’m scary, I can jump into trees and bite things! And everyone would be, oh no Grantaire, you’re so scary, how long have you been seventeen? And I’d tell them, far too fucking long, man!”

“Far too long indeed.” The stairs were tricky, but through luck and effort, they stumble up them. Enjolras glanced at Grantaire’s T-shirt and frowned. “Do you know where you left your coat?”

“Coat?” Grantaire asked, blinking up at him. “Why’d I need a coat? You’re warm. Why’re you so warm?”

“You’re still going to need a coat when we go outside—oh, here,” Enjolras said, shrugging his jacket off and bundling Grantaire in it. This drunk, he doubted Grantaire would be able to remember what color his coat was, much less find it in the scattered mess that was DKE.

“But you’re gonna be cold now.”

“I still have on more than you did,” Enjolras said, pointing at his sweater. “Besides, I can’t bring you back to your roommates drunk and sick too. They’ll think one of our arguments escalated and I actually tried to kill you this time.”

“They wouldn’t.” Despite being mostly limp deadweight at this point, Grantaire seemed needlessly set on being argumentative. Good to know some things never changed. “Joly and Bossuet, they won’t—I’m a shit, but they know you wouldn’t. You’re not—you’re intense, but not like that, yeah? You’re nice.”

Nice. It was such a foreign word that for a moment Enjolras could only stand there, stock-still under pulsating neon lights as he tried to wrap his mind around it.

“I’m not nice.”

“No, you’re like—you are, okay? The world—world’s fucked up, man, and you—you care so much, and no one else does, and it makes sense, it really does, why you’re so fucking angry all the time—”

“You’re drunk,” Enjolras sighed, re-hoisting Grantaire’s arm over his shoulder. Grantaire was stockier than he looked, but Enjolras hadn’t spent years dragging Courfeyrac home from theater parties for nothing. “Let’s get you home.”

“Fuck, I think I left my keys at home—”

“We’ll go to my place, then,” Enjolras said, working to keep his voice level. “Come on.”

For all that he thought it ridiculous and hyperbolic, there were times when Enjolras appreciated his campus reputation; as the frats boys slowly backed away in the face of his glare, this was one of them.

For all that he should have been burning the experience into his memory, Grantaire remembered very little of the walk back from DKE. Enjolras’s jacket around his shoulders, Enjolras’s warm arm holding him up—these were the kinds of details Grantaire should have been feverishly taking notes on, bottling up as fuel for syrupy daydreams about holding hands and shopping at farmer’s markets together.

Another reason he shouldn’t drink, really. Grantaire could probably make a whole middle school PSA by now. Exhibit one: the inability to remember cute boys carrying you to their apartment like a scene from a goddamn Harlequin romance novel.

“Hello there,” Combeferre said, appearing in his line of vision like a blurry, bespectacled angel of judgment. “How are you feeling?”

Grantaire took a moment to think over that, cataloguing the long list of regrets that had led to this particular moment in his life. “Existentially?”

“Just physically for now, though we can get to the existential bit later.”

“Mm.” Grantaire closed his eyes, letting his head sink onto the kitchen table. “Head hurts.”

“That’ll be the hangover kicking in,” Combeferre said, not unkindly. “Do you think you could keep a little water down? I have some aspirin, and the water would help against the dehydration as well.”

“Don’t know,” Grantaire said. If he closed his eyes very tight, it could all go away, the brightness pressing down on his eyelids disappearing with the rest of the world.

“Try, then.” And then, like that, a glass of water was nudging at his hand; opening his eyes, Grantaire saw two white aspirin pills on a white saucer and Combeferre’s beseeching expression.

Groaning, he rolled slightly more upright, tossing the pills down as quickly as possible before flopping back in the armchair. 

“Good,” Combeferre said, taking the empty glass from him. “It might take a while before it starts to kick in, but at least it’ll help with the hangover. Until then, you should try to make yourself as comfortable as you can. Come on,” he said, patting the couch. “Lie down.”

Grantaire shook his head. The motion made him dizzy, but against the pounding headache that’d already made its comfortable home in his temples, dizziness was small peanuts. “’m okay.”

“ _Grantaire,_ ” Combeferre said, voice low and pleasant and somehow entirely inarguable. With a sigh, Grantaire slumped onto the couch; another calmly implacable stare, and he was laying his head in Combeferre’s lap. Like he was some kind of dog, Grantaire thought, disgruntled, but then found those thoughts fading away as Combeferre’s fingers moved through his hair, doing something that was very obviously witchcraft.

“My mother used to do this for me, when I was sick,” Combeferre said, leafing through a paperback with one hand as the other hand continues slowly soothing away the edges of Grantaire’s headache. “When I was very little, she used to tell me she’d learned it during a trip to Scotland, after wandering the moors for several nights and finally stopping to meditate inside a cave.”

“You believed her?”

“Of course I believed her, I was five and she was my mother. She could have told me my father was a unicorn shapeshifter prince, and I would have asked her where his magic cave was and when we were going to visit.”

Weirdly enough, Grantaire could see it—tiny, round-faced Combeferre nodding along seriously as his mother told him stories of moonlight rendezvouses with wizened witches and aquatic spirits. Grantaire would have laughed at the image, but with whatever massage magic Combeferre was currently working, he was honestly inclined to believe Combeferre's mom as well.

Seconds passed, slow and soft. A thought struck Grantaire, and he frowned, trying to sit up before Combeferre stopped him.

“Where’s Enjolras?”

“Back at DKE, trying to find your keys and probably giving whoever was in charge of organizing this party five kinds of hell. Which, you know, is normally something I would try to talk him out of, but I rather think they deserve it this time, don’t you? You really shouldn’t be this drunk off of two or three drinks—my thought’s that someone put something in the punch without telling you.”

He’d had similar thoughts when the first drink had left him unbalanced and light-headed, but he’d chalked it down to extra bourbon in the mix or whatever. _Goddamn_ DKE. Why had he gotten another drink?

“I think I’m in love,” he said.

Combeferre’s fingers stilled. Grantaire made a noise of protest—Combeferre really was quite good at that—and then a moment later, Combeferre’s magical hands were moving again.

“And that’s not a good thing?”

“There’s no way he could like me. He’s—it would never work out. We’re not even—I don’t even know if he _likes_ guys or anything—and he’s way out of my league. _Way_ out. Light years out.”

“And this hypothetical guy,” Combeferre said, fingers still soothingly running through his scalp, “have you told him any of these concerns, yet?”

“Are you kidding me?” Grantaire groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. “Did you like—I mean, literal light years out of league. Like, just the fact that he talks to me, right now? Fuckin’ miracle.”

“Grantaire, I don’t think—"

“Uh, nuh uh _no_ ,” Grantaire said, waving a finger in the air and mostly succeeding; Combeferre’s glasses got knocked slightly askew, but they didn’t fall off, so harm done. “You don’t get to say that, Mr. Three Degrees and Reads to Children in His Free Time. You’re like—you don’t have to—mothers invite you to dinner, tell you to take the good china instead of staring like you’ll steal it. You can’t—you don’t—I‘m not like that, okay? He’s just so pretty and smart and _good_ , and I’m not, he can’t—it just won’t, okay? Ugh,” he said, running a hand over his face. “Love _sucks_.”

“Well,” Combeferre said after a moment, “maybe it’s the type of thing you’ll change your mind on, in the morning.”

As always, the worst part was the aftermath.

Grantaire knew that. Had always known that, really—had done this walk of shame enough times to know that this, in the end, was the whole problem in miniature. He’d known the risks, that the relief was only temporary, but he had done it anyways.

Between the pounding headache and the truly shaming morning after talk he’d gotten from Joly and Bossuet—no cruel words or anger, no angry disappointment, only Joly looking at him with unbearable concern while Joly explained, in calm, even words just how worried they had been, and how he should always feel free to talk to them about anything, it wouldn’t be bothering them and honestly, it would be better that way—Grantaire was ready for nothing else than curling into a small ball of shame and hiding away from the world.

But, of course, because the world didn’t believe in giving him a break, there was Enjolras, standing on his doorway.

“We should talk about last night.”

Grantaire shut his eyes, hoping that this was all just a post-blackout hallucination, but when he opened them again, Enjolras was still there.

He didn’t remember much of what had happened last enough, but what he did remember was distinctly humiliating. Waking up on Enjolras’s couch, bleary-eyed as Combeferre brewed a cup of tea and calmly told him there was a spare toothbrush in the bathroom, had just been the cherry on the shit sundae of humiliation.

“Honestly, just between the two of us, I’d rather we just skip to the part where we just kind of move on with our lives and pretend it never happened?”

Enjolras frowned at that, expression only getting more stubborn. “It’s important. I talked to Joly and Bossuet”—and of course he would; of course his humiliation couldn’t just be contained to separate lectures from his roommates and Enjolras, they had to get together and discuss it, what to do with him—“and I know from them that you don’t like talking about this, but it’s important. I’m not going to watch you engage in what’s essentially self-abuse and just pretend that everything’s alright. So: we’re talking about this.”

For a moment, Grantaire considered simply closing the door and walking back to his bed, where he could bury his head in his pillow until Enjolras gave up and left.

“Come in,” he sighed, ushering Enjolras inside. If they were going to go through another of The Fucked-Up Adventures of Grantaire, he’d prefer it happen without half his neighbors listening on.

For a long moment, they stood in the hallway, watching each other.

“Look,” Grantaire sighed, unable to take another moment of disappointed silence, “what do you want me to say? I’m sorry, it was dumb and I regret it, pinky-promise not to do it again?”

“I want to know why you did it. Bossuet and Joly said they hadn’t seen you that drunk in weeks, and I want to know what triggered this.”

Of course. Such a typical Enjolras move, too—identify the problem, break it down, extrapolate the solution from there. He wouldn’t have been surprised if there’d been a spreadsheet somewhere.

Grantaire shrugged, studying his shoes. “It was a Friday night. Joly and Bossuet were on their date with Musichetta, there was nothing else going on, and I thought I might as well kill some time. Obviously not the smartest idea ever made, but hey, when exactly has that been my forte.”

“That doesn’t explain why you had to go out and find strangers for company. You could have messaged Marius or Courfeyrac—I know for a fact Marius spends his Friday nights reading Hesiod, and you know Courfeyrac wouldn’t mind if you brought twenty people with you to one of his ThetaSig meetings. You could have texted them, or Bahorel or Jehan or _anyone_ from Les Amis. You could have messaged me.”

“I know that,” Grantaire said, trying not to wince. “And you’re all great and all, I love you guys, but it’s just…”

“It’s just what?”

“You’re just all such good people, and I…I don’t know. Sometimes I just need to—be somewhere where I can just—I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“You’re a good person too.”

“I’m a goddamn mess. I joined Les Amis because I was lonely, not because I gave a shit about making the world a better place. I got kicked out of my last school because I was going to half my classes hungover or high—”

“So? I once publicly threatened to castrate a classmate.”

“Yeah, but that was Felix Tholomyes—he’s literally the worst. You had a reason—”

“And you didn’t?”

Grantaire looked away first. “Can we be done with this?”

The frown on Enjolras’s face said he clearly wanted to argue, but after a moment he nodded. “Alright. But next time something like this happens, you tell us, alright? Joly and Bossuet or Courfeyrac, I don’t care—you tell one of us, and we take it from there, alright?”

“Alright,” he said. Even more people getting to experience his life as a perpetual fuck up—exactly what he’d always wanted. HD, full color, the whole Kardashian experience.

“What?” Enjolras asked, and Grantaire realized, somewhat belatedly, that he’d said at least some of those things out loud.

“Nothing,” he said. “Look, I—Jesus, Enjolras, it’s like barely eight, d’you want a coffee or anything? Joly’s mom got him one of those Keurig things, so rest assured, there is no way for either of us to burn the place down.”

“It was _one time,”_ Enjolras grumbled, following him towards the kitchen. “Courfeyrac needs to stop telling people about it like it’s indicative of anything.”

Grantaire arrived at Apt #32 Rue de Plume at 9am sharp, wearing his best shoes and the distinct expression of someone who had no idea why he was there.

“It’s open,” came Combeferre’s voice when he knocked, and so there was nothing to do but march towards his fate.

“Hi,” Grantaire said, shucking off his shoes by the door. “Is Enjolras here?”

“Enjolras is out right now,” Combeferre said, pulling out a chair for him at the kitchen table. “There’s a pro-immigration program he’s working on with Marius and, as much as he doesn’t want to admit, Marius’s Spanish really is much better than his. It’s just us, for now.”

“And me!”

“And Courfeyrac,” Combeferre said, nodding towards the direction of the shout. “Who is probably in the process of putting real clothes on right now because otherwise there will be _no_ waffles for him, _do you hear me, Courfeyrac?_ Would you want any coffee or tea?”

“Coffee would be fine,” Grantaire said, taking a seat and watching as Combeferre went over to the kitchen, took down an Interfaith Varsity 2013 mug from the cabinet, and poured a cup of coffee out from the coffee maker. It was a nice coffee maker. Stainless steel and everything. On the fridge, baby-faced versions of Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac threw matching peace signs at some long-ago camera. Enjolras—beautiful, unearthly Enjolras—was wearing braces. Braces.

“Sugar or milk?” Combeferre asked, seemingly unaware of the Twilight Zone his apartment occupied. “We only have soy right now, though there might be some packets of creamer hidden in a drawer somewhere.”

“I’m—it’s fine,” Grantaire said. “Just black is fine.”

It was, as expected, very good coffee.

“So,” Grantaire asked, hands curled around his mug, “why exactly did you ask me here?”

Combeferre hummed, one of those small, thoughtful sounds that would have sounded dismissive from anyone else.

“A few weeks ago,” he said, stirring more sugar into his mug, “you were drunk. Enjolras brought you home, and you ended up staying the night on our couch.”

“Yeah,” Grantaire said. “I remember that.” Despite the alcohol wiping out roughly 80% of that night’s memories, he remembered the mortifying generalities, lying on a couch while Combeferre coaxed tea and pain meds into him. “What’d I do? Ugly cry over my last ex, throw up all over a family heirloom?”

“You said you were in love with someone.”

Grantaire choked, and it was only Combeferre’s quick reflexes that saved him from splashing hot coffee all over himself. Courfeyrac—who of course had chosen this exact moment to enter the scene, shower shoes slapping wetly against neat tile—pounded dutifully on Grantaire’s back with the nervous force of someone who had read about the Heimlich maneuver but never expected to have to actually perform it.

“Okay?” Courfeyrac asked when Grantaire finally managed to catch his breath.

“I—yeah,” Grantaire said, taking a glass of water from Combeferre with gratitude. He sipped at it slowly, mind still racing to catch up with the present. He’d certainly been drunk enough to do something that colossally stupid, but he hadn’t—Grantaire was a fun drunk, goddamn it, not a mopey one. All his friends (all his old friends) had told him so. “I don’t remember that.”

“That’s understandable,” Combeferre said, eyes sympathetic. “You were pretty out of it; Enjolras was convinced we needed to get you to a doctor, but you insisted against one, so I offered to watch you while he went to chew out all of Delta Kappa Epsilon. It seems that even when drunk, you two can’t agree on anything.” There’s a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, one which is a little too knowing for Grantaire’s comfort.

“Um,” Grantaire said. “Can I ask a question?”

“Question away,” Courfeyrac said, taking a seat between the two of them. Quietly, Combeferre slid him a mug of coffee, which Courfeyrac proceeded to attack with milk and sugar. “We’re holding this whole shindig for your benefit, anyways.”

“Is this the part where you tell me not to hurt him or you’ll castrate me and keep the change?”

Combeferre smiled. It was borderline creepy, just how calmly pleasant yet blank his expression was. “It’s not Enjolras I’m worried about here, Grantaire. As much as I would like to do the very best friend thing of vetting all potential suitors, I know Enjolras doesn’t my help. I’m trying to help _you_.”

Grantaire’s face had to be doing something spectacularly unattractive, if Courfeyrac’s snorting laugh was any indication.

“Enjolras has,” Combeferre said carefully, “a particular way of drawing people to him, without really meaning to. People tend to get caught up in his passion, and they tend to build up an image of him in their minds, one that doesn’t necessarily correspond with who he actually is.”

“What Ferre means,” Courfeyrac said, leaning towards Grantaire, “is that E’s great at organizing sit-ins and protests, but he’s shit with birthdays and anniversaries. He cares about people, but that doesn’t actually mean he’s good at the day-to-day thing of actually remembering to take care of them. If you want to date him, you’re going to have to accept that sometimes Enjolras is going to put the cause above Valentine’s plans or dinner dates or, you know, frivolous shit like sleep and food.”

“I don’t want to make him change for me.” Grantaire stared at his coffee, watching the liquid faintly slosh back and forth in the mug. “He’s intense about things, I know, and I mean—I like that. I wouldn’t want to suddenly, I don’t know, drop these things he cares about just I want to like, you know, cuddle more often or something.”

“Good answer,” Courfeyrac said, nodding in approval. “You know he’s asexual, right?”

“Sort of? I mean, I've heard stuff and I guessed as much, but no one really confirmed it...but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s against the dating thing, does it?”

“No,” Combeferre said, then sighed. “It does complicate it, though. Enjolras is okay with physical affection, hand-holding, hugging—whatever you would do with a close platonic friend, really. Kissing’s trickier—closed mouth and platonic kisses are fine, but I wouldn’t really hold my breath for much on that front. Sex—I suppose I could see it happening, theoretically?”

“Which, in Combeferre speak, means good fucking luck, champ,” Courfeyrac added, reaching over to snag a waffle. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell unless the snowball was made of liquid nitrogen and was only there for like, half a minute maybe.”

“Or hell could just be just frozen over. You always forget to account for that scenario,” Combeferre said, “and I know you do that on purpose because we both took AP Lit, and I distinctly remember reading over that Dante essay three times before you turned it in. Anyways,” he said, turning to Grantaire, “back to the point. Yes, barring extraordinary circumstances, sex is probably off the table.”

“This table in particular, since we kind of also like eating on it. But also, you know, any surface in general.”

“No offense, but how do you know all this?”

“Childhood friends,” Combeferre said. “And to answer that particular rumor, no, Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and I are involved in some sort of salacious social justice menage a trois. We practically grew up together; there have been scientific studies showing how tends to decrease actual sexual attraction, and yet this entire campus still insists on seeing us as some sort of advert for sixties-style free love. Which I have nothing against, mind you, but I really do wish they would at least think a little better coming up with these rumors. It’s really very hard to be attracted to someone when you’ve seen them eat cat food on a dare.”

“We would have gotten another five dollars too, if _someone_ ,” Courfeyrac said, jerking a thumb at Combeferre, “hadn’t been such a stick in the mud and just eaten some Friskies instead.”

“Our parents were going through a vegan phase,” Combeferre said, sipping his coffee primly. “I was showing solidarity.”

“Solidarity forced upon us without our consent or input! Honestly, Ferre, way you acted back then, we were worried you might be into benevolent dictatorship or something.”

“Benevolent dictatorship by my mother, a woman with a Ph.D. and two master’s degrees, or mob rule by several eight-year-olds? I think I know which one I’d choose. Anyways, we’re getting away from the topic again—I don’t think Grantaire came here just to hear us talk reminisce about what awful children we were.”

“No, actually, you can go on. If you have anything on Enjolras in particular…”

“Oh, _loads,”_ Courfeyrac said, leaning forward and grinning. “You’re going to have to work for it, though. You have to be level 18 friendship or above to get dirt on Enj, and that number is going to go dramatically up or down depending on how this romance thing goes down.”

 _That_ was more than enough to startle Grantaire out of any sense of ease he’d managed to settle into.

Combeferre sighed. “Have a waffle,” he said, nudging the plate towards Grantaire. “I didn’t make these just for show, you know.”

“By which he means this is an awkward enough convo as it is, no reason to have it on an empty stomach as well.” Courfeyrac placed three waffles on a plate, drowning them in a sea of fruit and multi-colored syrup before placing the whole stack in front of Grantaire. “Please eat, it’ll make us feel less bad about cornering you about your love life.”

Despite the alarming toppings, the waffles were, as promised, quite good.

“Okay,” Grantaire said as Combeferre poured them all more coffee. “So, I get that Enjolras is your friend and you feel, I don’t know, responsible that people don’t fuck him over, but why exactly am I being brought into this again? I’m not going to—the ace thing doesn’t bother me, but even if it did—it doesn’t mean anything, you know? It’s—I’ve had dumb crushes before, and I’m not delusional, I know I don’t have a snowball’s hell in chance here. I mean, he barely tolerates me half the time—”

“Enjolras barely tolerates _me_ nearly all the time,” Courfeyrac said. “That doesn’t mean we’re not friends. Trust me, it’s pretty damn obvious when E doesn’t like you, as I’m sure you’ve observed.”

“All of which is to say, all bickering aside, Enjolras _does_ like you. But it gets tricky, beyond that,” Combeferre said. “I don’t pretend to keep track of Enjolras’s life, but, well…we did grow up together. I’ve seen a lot of people, many of them good friends or on their way there, want more from Enjolras than what he was necessarily ready to give. Not a lot of them stayed friends, afterwards.” 

“I don’t want to make him uncomfortable. I mean, if he just wants to be friends or—”

“We don’t want you to be uncomfortable, either. In case you haven’t noticed, we're your friends too.”

Grantaire blinked.

“I’ll make more waffles,” Combeferre said, standing up. “Sans anything that looks like a science experiment, help yourself to anything in the fridge, alright?”

Grantaire walked home with a loaf of chocolate chip banana bread, a Tupperware full of vegetarian chili (“Ferre made a whole Crockpot of this, there’s no way we’re going to finish it, and he probably thinks you need protein or something”), and a head still spinning from revelations.

Well. Perhaps not revelations exactly, but something like that.

The apartment was dark when he entered, not a single sound intruding as Grantaire took off his shoes and placed the food in the refrigerator. Bossuet and Joly must have been out, either a date with Musichetta or an afternoon study session at one of the libraries. Possibly both at the same time, depending on how Joly’s test anxiety went. So there was no one to see as Grantaire slowly slumped to the ground, staring blankly at the wall in front of him.

Grantaire was aware, vaguely, that he was overreacting, anxiety brain taking innocuous strands of thought and tangling them into something far more disastrous and melodramatic than their individual parts. But that was the thing about anxiety brain—it didn't matter how much you knew it was ridiculous and illogical, it just kept going and going anyway.

It wasn’t like he didn’t want Enjolras. Enjolras might have been asexual, but Grantaire wasn’t, and anybody with half a functional libido would have wanted him. But the more Grantaire thought about, the more he realized that while yes, he would have liked the whole sex thing—liked it very, very much—it wasn’t the main thing, not by a fucking long shot. In his fantasies of Enjolras, they held hands and went to coffee shops together, bought pastries and talked politics until the whole shop was watching them, Enjolras practically glowing as he promulgated on the evils of casual Hollywood whitewashing—

It was stupid. It wasn’t, his brain whispered in its most deluded, upset moments, _impossible._

Except Enjolras was asexual.

Except Enjolras was asexual and had never in a romantic relationship with anyone except (semi?) accidentally.

Except they were barely friends, a few rungs above friendly acquaintances, who spent half their time arguing—

It was stupid, though. Stupid to hang around Enjolras all the time, to watch him in all his passion and righteous anger and wonder maybe, just maybe—

It would hurt, forcing himself to stay away, but that was alright. It was a crush, just a stupid crush; it would pass, and then Grantaire could move on from it, go back to being simply almost friends again, Enjolras just another acquaintance he could talk to without feeling like his throat would close up in anxiety.

Stay away. Wait until the whole thing blew over.

It didn’t matter if Combeferre’s frown grew a little deeper whenever they saw each other or that Joly and Bossuet kept exchanging concerned looks when they thought he wasn’t watching, Grantaire told himself. He wasn’t going to risk making Enjolras uncomfortable, wasn’t going to topple their friendship and split their friend groups for something as stupid as feelings; he’d changed since Delacroix, goddamn it. He wasn’t going to fuck things up again. And so keeping his distance, skipping meetings and turning down study sessions and leaving texts on read—it hurt, yes, but it was the best thing to do. For all of them.

Of course, then there was also the fact that Enjolras was a stubborn bastard.

Grantaire, as a rule, was not a morning person. The fact that he was awake at 8am was already bad enough; the fact that he was awake because Enjolras was standing on his doorstep, somehow impeccably dressed despite the hour, was nothing less than pure sadism on the universe’s part.

“You haven’t been coming to meetings,” Enjolras said, not waiting for him to recover. “Why?”

“Hi to you too,” Grantaire said, sighing as he ushered Enjolras inside. It was far too early to be here right now, face-to-face Enjolras glaring at him like the ghost of gentrification past. “Most people call before showing, but you know, come on in, it isn’t the twenty-first century or anything.”

“So I could go straight to voicemail and leave a message you’d never listen to? You’re not at the Musain anymore, you don’t show up at meetings, and when I message you about it, you’re always giving me these bullshit answers. I had to ask Bossuet and Joly whether you’d be here because you haven’t answered my texts for the last two days.”

Grantaire winced. He really hadn’t meant that last one, but he just…all that effort, and Grantaire’s heart still skipped a beat whenever he saw a text from Enjolras. It had seemed like a good time, at the time, to simply try ignoring them. “I’ve been busy?” he tried.

“Don’t try to lie, you’re terrible at it.” Enjolras stepped in front of him, eyes catching his. They were blue and determined, so intent Grantaire couldn’t look away. “You’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you? Why?”

“I haven’t been ignoring you,” Grantaire muttered, but even he could tell how weak the words sounded.

“Was it something I did? I asked Combeferre and Courfeyrac and they said they didn’t think so, but it’s not like you’ve started treating anyone else at Les Amis any different, it’s only been me—”

“What? No, of course you didn’t do anything, what the fuck, Enjolras—”

“Then why,” Enjolras said, voice rising as he steps towards him, “the fuck have you been avoiding me?”

All thought came to a screeching stop, and Grantaire could only stare wide-eyed at Enjolras. Because that was what he’d been doing, wasn’t it? All these months, all those promises he’d given his mom and his counselors about fresh starts, and here he was, fuck-up of the fucking year doing the same goddamn thing he always did—running away from problems, avoiding consequences, avoiding responsibility—

“Oh,” Enjolras said, something in his stance changing, softening. “They gave you the talk, didn’t they?”

“I’m—what?”

“Combeferre and Courfeyrac,” Enjolras said, frowning. “The talk where they outline all the terms and conditions that come along with having feelings for me.”

Some part of Grantaire’s expression beyond the shell shock must have provided the answer, because Enjolras sighed, tension leaking out of him as he scrubbed one hand over his face. “I tell them they don’t have to, that it’s unnecessary, but every fucking time—” 

“It’s kind of sweet, actually,” Grantaire said, and then found himself surprised that he could still talk. Should he still be talking? Why hadn’t Enjolras left already? “If, you know, also a little extra.”

“ _Extra_ practically describe everything by them.”

“Hello to you as well, kettle,” Grantaire said, which made Enjolras half-grimace, half-smile in capitulation. It was an expression that did something odd to his heart, the way the majority of the things Enjolras did seemed to. There was probably some kind of disease for it. Smitten-itis. Hopeless cause syndrome. He’d have to ask Joly, when he got the chance.

Given, of course, that he survived that long.

“Okay,” Enjolras said, nodding. “So. You have feelings for me.”

“Um,” Grantaire said, blinking. “Yes? I thought that was kind of obvious?”

“I wanted to check.” And it was weird—weird that Enjolras was still here, that he hadn’t punched him or stalked off in disgust already—but none of that held a candle to the way Enjolras was watching him, slow and steady like this whole situation was somehow worthy of something like rational discussion.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Grantaire said, breaking the silence. “I mean, like, I know this whole thing is ass backwards, and I don’t expect—anyways. It’s just a dumb crush, and it’s not like I’m was ever deluded enough to think I actually had a chance—”

“Grantaire!” Enjolras said, grabbing his shoulders. Grantaire stopped talking, partially because Enjolras was staring at him with unexpected intensity but also because _holy shit Enjolras was staring at him and his hands were on his shoulders._

Enjolras had very long lashes. They were a paler gold than his hair, almost gauzy in the early morning air, and Grantaire hated himself for noticing it, hated himself even more for noticing how long Enjolras’s fingers were, how long and how strong as they clutched the fabric of his T-shirt.

“Look,” Enjolras said, eyes boring into his, a faint line between his brows, “this isn’t easy for me either, alright? I’ve been thinking everything about the past few weeks, reexamining every interaction we’ve had since that first meeting—and I still don’t think I’m wrong, you’re still stubborn and you still refuse to take things seriously half the time, your pessimism is honestly two steps away from fatalism, and it’s incredibly aggravating, it really is—”

“Wow,” Grantaire said, “way to soften the blow, don’t sugarcoat it or anything—"

“—but it doesn’t bother me, or at least not the way it used to. I _like_ talking to you, even when we argue. Especially when we argue, actually. And taking all that into account—that, and the way I’ve been reacting to things lately—the bar incidence, though I still think there would be more —I think there’s a chance, maybe, that there might be more to this than I thought. That you might not be all that far off, when you think about what we might be.”

Grantaire stared at him.

“Um, sorry,” he said, “but sincerely, what the fuck?”

“I think I have feelings for you, alright?”

Grantaire blinked. Squeezed his eyes shut, counted to three, then opened them again. No change. Not a concussion?

“What?”

Enjolras sighed. It was a strangely frustrated sound, as if for once he couldn’t quite get the words to line up perfectly in his head. “I know we got off on the wrong foot and that I haven’t really been helping that along, but yes, I like you. I like spending time with you and I like talking to you and I’d like to do more of that in the future, including all the parts where we get into long arguing matches in front of our friends and buy each other coffee to apologize.”

Grantaire stared at him. He thought his mouth might be open, but he couldn’t be sure. “You’re, um. You’re serious about this.”

“Yes, Grantaire,” Enjolras said, huffing a breath in frustration, “that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes.”

“I think I need to sit down,” Grantaire said, and so he did. It was hard to stand, after all, when his brain was in the process of short-circuiting.

Enjolras sat down next to him. He didn’t touch him or say anything, but Grantaire appreciated it, nonetheless.

“Okay,” Grantaire said, once he was able to muster a thought beyond internal screeching. “That’s—I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but are you sure this isn’t just, I don’t know, some sort of misplaced sense of social responsibility? Like, maybe you felt sorry for me, and now you think dating me will help me become a competent human being?”

“What? Where the fuck would you get that idea?”

“Um, I don't know, because none of this makes any sense otherwise? Like, I mean, you’re you, and I’m,” he shrugged, waving a hand at himself, “I’m me.”

“First of all,” Enjolras said, “I don’t ‘feel sorry for people’—besides the fact that that would be incredibly condescending and paternalistic, that attitude is incredibly reductive of the agency and personal strength required to survive difficult situations. Second of all, I don’t feel sorry for you, and even if I didn’t, that wouldn’t mean anything—I feel sorry for Marius and Cosette watching them try to talk to each other, but I’ve never had the urge to buy coffee for either of them. I don’t feel sorry for you, Grantaire. I like you. You’re absolutely infuriating sometimes, but you’re also smart and talented and you care so much, even when you pretend you don’t. You’re not just a competent human being—you’re way, way more than that, and if I ever meet whoever made you think otherwise, I’ll eviscerate them. Metaphorically or physically, you choose—Marius can teach me how to curse them out in three languages, and I’ve probably picked up enough from Combeferre to disembowel someone.”

“God,” Grantaire said, startled into laughing, “is this why everyone on campus was so scared of you after the Felix Tholoymes event?”

Enjolras smiled, all teeth and intimidation, and oh, that did something to Grantaire, warmed him up like hot chocolate on the coldest day of winter. All that fierce, unwavering protectiveness, and for him. For _him._

“So,” Grantaire said, when he trusted himself to speak again. “If you like me and obviously I like you, then—”

Enjolras shrugged. “Combeferre and Courfeyrac gave you the speech, didn’t they? It wouldn’t be the easiest thing, and I don’t promise I won’t be strange about some things, but...I wouldn’t mind trying.”

“But,” Grantaire said, mind still trying to wrap itself around the dizzying reorientation of the last few minutes, “Combeferre and Courfeyrac said...I mean, but aren’t you ace?”

“Yes,” Enjolras said, “I am, but it’s honestly not a big deal. Obviously the visibility of the issue is, making sure other people know they aren’t alone and that there’s nothing unnatural about what they feel, but personally it’s never felt like a defining part of who I am, at least not any more so than being vegetarian or hating Felix Tholomyes. I mean, if we’re going to look at it in terms of visibility, I’m pretty sure more people know the Tholomyes thing than they do about the asexuality.”

“That’s because Felix Tholomyes is objectively the worst, and he 100% deserved it. So...you’re asexual, but that doesn’t mean you’re also aromantic?”

“Possibly not? Probably not? It’s not like I haven’t been in relationships before, but those were mostly...one-sided and really, really short. I’ve never really had the motivation to try, before.”

"But you want to try. Now, I mean.”

Enjolras shrugged. “To an extent, I guess. More than that, though...I like you, and I like spending time with you, and I’d like to really continue doing that. There are just...there would just be things I know, just on a mental level, that I’d have no interest in actually trying.”

“Ah. The whole asexuality thing.”

Enjolras nodded. “It’s not as though I judge anyone for it, so long as it’s consensual and no one’s being taken advantage of. But when it comes to thinking about it on a personal level...I don’t know. I’ve just always known that it isn’t my thing, I guess. It’s not something that bothers me, but a lot of people find it a little weird, when I put it in those terms.”

Grantaire took a moment before replying. “I mean, sex is pretty weird if you think about it, isn’t it? Like, hey, let’s take off my clothes and stick our genitals around in each other, that’s a cool thing to do.”

“Other people seem to think it’s pretty important, though. _You_ like it.”

“I mean, I’m into it, yeah, but I also willingly buy PBR, so I don’t think anyone should really take me as a standard or anything.” 

“That is true,” Enjolras said wryly. “I’m hoping PBR isn’t another mandatory part of this dating thing either, because I don't think it—or, you know, any alcohol actually—should be a part of this relationship.”

“I'm the one with the drinking problem, I get to decide about whether or not we can joke about it. Anyways, it's only the finest of Coors Light for anyone _I’m_ dating.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s grounds for divorce in some Catholic sect.”

“It _should_ be grounds for divorce everywhere, because honestly? I’ll drink anything, but that shit is truly awful.” Enjolras laughed at that, and Grantaire couldn’t help grinning. It was surprising how easy it was, after all the pent-up anxiety and silence, to continue bantering with Enjolras as usual. As though nothing had changed between them, as if whatever change could come could not touch this, the easy camaraderie at the core of their friendship.

“So…” Grantaire said, fingers tapping against his thigh as he dared to meet Enjolras’s eyes. “The ace thing still stands, but um...what about other things? Like, I mean, like, not exactly the physical, but I don’t know, um, holding hands and stuff? Can I like...I mean, we already go out for coffee all the time, but could I buy you dinner?”

“Considering your taste in beer, I’m not sure I’d trust you to pick dinner,” Enjolras said, reaching out to take Grantaire’s hand in his. Grantaire’s fidgeting immediately stopped, if only because he found himself frozen in place. “Kissing...kissing’s weird. I’ve done it before,” this said with a shrug, “and it wasn’t terrible, but probably not something I’d do of my own volition either. Mouth-to-mouth I mean, and not cheek kisses—those are fine, it’s just when saliva gets involved that I mentally opt out. I don’t know. I’ve been told it gets better depending on the person, though.” 

“Well,” Grantaire said, cautiously reaching for Enjolras’s hand, “if you ever want to test that, I’ll be game to try. Just don’t tell Combeferre, or he’ll probably make us run multiple trials and record the results.”

“Multiple trials would probably be fine,” Enjolras said, smiling slowly as he laced their fingers together. “Provided the first ones go well, I mean.”

“Of course. Gotta do it for the scientific integrity, after all.”

Enjolras smiled, and it was like watching the sun rise.

In the end, because it was Enjolras he was dating, they called a meeting.

They met at the Café Musain, all the core members of Les Amis de L’ABC plus Joly and Bossuet and Musichetta, who apparently stuck to the policy of making her boyfriends’ business hers. Three tables pushed together just managed to accompany their group plus their small mountain of pancakes and two trays of vegan mini-scones.

The Musain staff brought around their coffee, and for a few moments, silence reigned as they all concerned on caffeinating.

“I have an announcement to make,” Enjolras said, because of course he would. Grantaire wouldn’t be surprised if he’d prepared notes for the occasion. “Grantaire and I—we’re dating.”

Grantaire gave a little wave, then immediately regretted it. “Surprise?” he tried. God, he hoped he didn’t sound as nervous as he felt.

Beneath the table, Enjolras squeezed his hand.

“That’s five dollars you both owe me,” Bossuet said to Joly and Musichetta, cheerful as he tore into his stack of waffles.

“Yes, but that’s also _six_ you owe me,” Musichetta said, grabbing a piece of bacon off Bossuet’s plate. “I told you they wouldn’t announce it during a meeting—like, can you imagine a worse way to kill a mood?”

“See,” Bossuet, said, raising his fork in the air, waffle speared on the end and waving floppily in the air, “but I didn’t specify that they’d _announce_ it first at a meeting, just that they’d announce it at some point. Which reminds,” he said, nodding at Enjolras, “next _Les Amis_ meeting, can you put something in the meeting notes, just a quick note about how the two of you are dating? Six dollars rests on it.”

“Wait, wait,” Grantaire said, blinking as he stared around them. “You’ve been taking bets on us?”

“It was either that, or watch you two fumble around for another semester, so yeah, we kind of had to take things into hand.” Courfeyrac shrugging, licking syrup off one finger. Beside him, Jehan pulled out a handkerchief, dabbing the syrup off the corner of Courfeyrac’s collar; Courfeyrac smiled, dropping a kiss on Jehan’s hand before turning back to the rest of the table. “Besides, it worked, didn’t it?”

“I didn't participate, if you're curious," Combeferre added, spreading jam on a mini-scone. "I just kept track of everyone else’s bets, which means I get 5% of the total shares.”

“For the record, just so we can get be on clear on this,” Enjolras said, “you are all terrible people, and I don’t know why I’m friends with any of you.”

“You know,” Grantaire said, “for once, I think I might actually agree with Enjolras on something.”

His boyfriend flipped him off, but with Enjolras's other hand still warm in his beneath the table, Grantaire couldn't help but count it as an overall win.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely pleased with this, but at this point I'm honestly just glad to yeet it out of my drafts folder
> 
> hbd to the nerd I'm sending this to + I've spent maybe twenty minutes on Tinder before deleting it, so I guess this is now technically Outsider Art


End file.
